Grand Jury Charges Two With Bombing

A federal grand jury in Oklahoma City yesterday accused Timothy
James McVeigh and Terry Lynn Nichols of conspiring to bomb the Alfred P.
Murrah Federal Building there last April and said it was convinced that
others, as yet unidentified, had taken part in the plot.

The 11-count indictment alleged the defendants plotted "together
and with others unknown," but it made no reference to the role these
others might have played.

Attorney General Janet Reno said at a news conference here, "We
will pursue every lead based on the evidence. But we have charged
everyone involved that we have evidence of at this point."

While prosecutors suggested they had "probable cause" to believe
other suspects might turn up, the indictment issued yesterday against
McVeigh and Nichols outlined a closely held conspiracy among two friends
who concocted a bombing plot that was surprisingly cheap to finance and
simple to carry out but deadly in its result.

A friend and onetime Army buddy of the two main defendants, Michael
Fortier, was charged in a separate indictment with knowing of their plan
and concealing it from law enforcement authorities. He was also charged
with lying to the FBI and with involvement in a robbery that helped
finance the terrorist attack. The April 19 bombing killed 168 and
injured hundreds more.

Fortier struck a deal with Justice Department prosecutors earlier
this week and is expected to testify against McVeigh and Nichols. What
he has to say could provide the government with the most direct
information to date in a case thus far built largely on circumstantial
and forensic evidence.

Defense attorneys for McVeigh and Nichols attacked the prosecution
case as a rush to judgment and said they would press to have the trial
held outside Oklahoma.

"Terry Nichols is not guilty of the allegations of which he is
charged," said Nichols's chief defense lawyer, Michael Tigar. He
denounced the government's case as flimsy, saying "everything in this
indictment has already been leaked and played in the national media."

U.S. Attorney Pat Ryan said in Oklahoma City prosecutors will seek
the death penalty against McVeigh and Nichols. Reno, who is supposed to
have final say on sentencing in capital crimes, announced shortly after
the bombing that the death penalty would be sought against those
responsible. Defense lawyers protested again yesterday that Reno had
improperly made up her mind in advance and should disqualify herself.

Ryan said after their federal trial McVeigh and Nichols would stand
trial in an Oklahoma state court on murder charges for eight persons
killed in the April blast who were outside the Murrah building.

Fortier, who formally pleaded guilty to the charges against him
yesterday afternoon, faces a maximum of 23 years in prison and fines
totaling $1 million.

Asked about the dismembered leg clothed in military garb found deep
in the blast site, officials here and in Oklahoma City said
investigators are still trying to determine whether it has any bearing
on the case. News of the discovery touched off speculation it may have
belonged to a man some witnesses said they saw with McVeigh on the
morning of the bombing.

The indictment makes no mention of "John Doe No. 2," the elusive
individual who became the subject of a nationwide manhunt after some
witnesses said they saw with McVeigh when he picked up the Ryder rental
truck used in the bombing.

The government yesterday did withdraw all charges against Terry
Nichols's brother, James. He had been picked up in Michigan shortly
after the Oklahoma City bombing and was held for a month in jail as a
material witness before being indicted on three explosives charges. In
acknowledging the case against James Nichols had fizzled, U.S. Attorney
Saul A. Green said in Detroit said that "additional investigation failed
to corroborate some of the important evidence on which the government
initially relied."

The first three counts in the main indictment, the result of one of
the most exhaustive investigations in the nation's history, charged
McVeigh and Nichols with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction
to kill people and destroy federal property, with using a truck bomb to
kill people, and with malicious destruction of property resulting in
death. The conspiracy charge lists by name all persons who died inside
the Murrah building in order of their age from 73 years to 4 months.

The other eight counts were brought under a federal statute
covering the murders of federal law enforcement officers, one count for
each of those killed in the blast.

The indictment skirts the questions of why and just when McVeigh,
27, and Nichols, 40, decided to blow up the Murrah Building, but it
lists the first overt act as having taken place on Sept. 22, 1994, when
McVeigh rented a storage unit in Herington, Kan., in the name of "Shawn
Rivers." In a sparse chronology, the indictment tells of how the two
defendants allegedly collected materials for the bomb, stored them and
eventually assembled the device that exploded on April 19.

These and many of the other allegations have been made before in
early court pleadings, but the indictment adds some new details. It
said, for instance, that in late September, McVeigh made telephone calls
in an effort to obtain detonation cord and racing fuel and that he and
Nichols stole explosives from a storage locker in Marion, Kan.

On Oct. 3, the government charged, McVeigh and Nichols transported
the stolen explosives to Kingman, Ariz., where McVeigh rented a storage
unit for them. Fortier lived in Kingman.

The indictment said McVeigh and Nichols were involved in the Nov.
5, 1994, robbery of a firearms dealer in Arkansas "to help finance their
planned act of violence."

On Dec. 16, 1994, the main indictment adds, McVeigh, en route to
Kansas "to take possession of the stolen firearms," drove with Fortier
to the Murrah building "and identified the building as the target."

The indictment against Fortier accuses him of conspiring to
transport firearms stolen in Arkansas across state lines.

Fortier also was charged with selling some of the stolen firearms
and delivering part of the proceeds "to McVeigh for Nichols."

Defense attorneys yesterday assailed Fortier, who is likely to
become one of the government's chief witnesses. "If you want to know
who's confessed to being involved in the bombing, he's {Fortier} right
down the street," said Tigar, Nichols's lawyer. "We do not fear anything
Mr. Fortier has to say."

Fortier's lawyer, Michael McGuire, described his client as full of
remorse.

"There is no expression of grief or words sufficient to describe
his anguish over the responsibility he feels for knowing about the plans
to bomb the Murrah building," McGuire said in an interview at his
office. "The defining thing that made him want to cooperate was his
conscience."

Stephen Jones, McVeigh's chief lawyer, suggested the government's
grant of immunity to Fortier's wife, Lori, was a strong factor along
with the plea bargain Fortier struck.

"I think any time the government has to give two {potential}
co-defendants a pretty good deal, there are weaknesses in the case,"
Jones told reporters.

He quickly sought to cloud the prosecution's contentions by issuing
a statement about a government informant who late last year warned
federal authorities of a developing bomb plot against a federal building
in a midwestern city.

According to Jones, the informant described the orchestrators of
the plot as a "combination of American citizens and, he thought, either
Latin Americans or Arabs.

The individuals were identified by Arabic names." Jones said the
informant also talked of traveling to Kingman, Ariz.
Lardner reported from Washington and Thomas from Oklahoma City. Staff
writer Serge F. Kovaleski and staff researcher Roland Matifas
contributed to this report.